Product Usability Survival Techniques

User Interface Engineering's Christine Perfetti has delivered this popular
one-day course to hundreds of designers, developers, and managers. Using
a combination of entertaining lecture and fast-paced exercises, this seminar
helps attendees understand exactly how to build usable products and web
sites.

Usability: The Big Picture

We'll start the day by discussing how quality and usability are intertwined.
You'll see how to use usability tests to measure the quality of a design.
And, you'll see how simple changes to your existing development process
can dramatically improve your product.

The collection of usability data is not only important to make sure your
product is easy to use, it is required to ensure you are only building
those functions your users need. Usability data can tell you what features
you've left out of your product, even before you've written the first
line of code.

Iterative development is a way of looking at your existing development
process. You'll learn to minimize implementation, by building only those
pieces you need for a specific iteration. And, you'll use frequent, inexpensive
measurement techniques, such as usability testing, to deliver key information
about a design.

Paper Mock-ups

Using common office supplies, development teams can build a working prototype
of the product in a matter of hours. It may sound counter-intuitive, but
we've found that it's usually faster to develop and change a paper mock-up
than an electronic prototype. We'll share our prototyping tricks for simulating
all kinds of user interface widgets.

You'll learn to create a fully working paper mock-up of any proposed
design, which you can use to collect usability data through usability
testing. You'll discover what aspects of your design work well, and what
users have trouble with. Using paper mock-ups, you can make changes very
quickly, even during a usability test!

The Design Competition: More than the Usual Classroom Exercise!

The high point of this seminar is our design competition. Using everything
you've learned, you'll build a fully working product in just a few hours.
We assign each participant a different role to play as part of a five-person
design team. Each team builds a working prototype in two hours. Then, real
users test each design. Because it's a competition, you'll find yourself
totally immersed, working at top speed. The team that has the most usable
interface wins fabulous prizes!!

This is not just a toy exercise. It is the real thing. We've carefully
constructed every detail to duplicate the issues that arise in real product
development. Over 2,000 professionals have participated in past competitions,
and many tell us that this is the best part of the seminar. In this competition,
you will:

Construct paper mock-ups that actually simulate every aspect of the
product

Identify key usability problems by conducting a series of fast usability
tests

Make major changes to a design in just a few moments, then find out
exactly how the changes improve the product

Work with a multi-disciplinary team to create a synergy

You May Need this Course if...

Usability is becoming important in your product's marketplace

Members of your development team don't know what's "good enough" for
this release

You are changing target platforms, for example, moving from a character
cell interface to a GUI or from a GUI to the Web

Developers have little or no contact with users

The development team ends up doing a lot of rework because requirements
aren't clearly defined

There is contention between different departments: programming, marketing,
QA, documentation, support, or training

Who Should Attend?

This course is ideal for all members of the product or web site development
team, including: software engineers, user interface designers, project
leaders, technical writers, marketing professionals, graphic designers,
and product managers.

UI13 Seminar Recommendations: If
you're interested in Christine's full-day seminar, you may also want to
attend Dana Chisnell's seminar on Usability Testing or Donna (Maurer) Spencer's seminar on Information Architecture.